A note on the words: soup curry is a thin, heavily spiced curry broth served with whole vegetables and a large piece of meat, with the rice alongside rather than underneath it; gekikara means extra hot; and momo are Nepali dumplings, close to a boiled gyoza. Prices are as of this writing (August 2026).
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Book a table at SHANTi Itabashi on AutoReserve (English) — opening hours, payment details and the Japanese address are kept up to date there, not here.
This is Hangover Meshi. I have been coming to Kami-Itabashi a fair bit lately, and this time it was SHANTi, the soup curry place next door to Tamashii no Chuka Soba, the ramen shop I went to the other day. I felt like having lunch a little early, but very few places are open that early — most start around half past eleven. This one was already open, so soup curry it was.
I only found out afterward that there are quite a few soup curry places called SHANTi.
Whether they are all one chain I honestly cannot say, but there seem to be ones in Ikebukuro, Takadanobaba, Shibuya, Noda and Harajuku too. I had no idea it was somewhere that well known.
Chicken and vegetable soup curry, 1,530 yen
Vegetable soup curry, 1,350 yen
Mandala Special, 2,000 yen
I went for the Mandala Special, which looks like the everything-in-it one.
Then, thinking I did not really need the rice, I asked for it without — and they said that in that case they would add a vegetable topping for me! A really lovely bit of thoughtfulness. So I had them put okra on. Result.
It is hot out, after all. A highball.
After a while, here it comes! The Mandala Special!
Oh! Vegetables everywhere. With the okra added on top it looks properly lavish!
With this, you really do not need the rice at all.
And sitting in the middle of it is a big piece of chicken!
So, a first bite of the chicken. It is so tender it falls apart under a spoon or a fork.
Eating it: soft and delicious! And the curry soup has a good depth to it.
Drinking the soup on its own, it has a sharp heat and it is good. You can actually pick from a lot of heat levels, and I went for gekikara, the top rung of the ones that cost nothing extra. Apparently you can go a great deal further if you want to, but overdoing it brings its own problems, so gekikara seems the right place to start.
Gekikara is properly hot, and going beyond it might genuinely tip into too hot.
The vegetables have each been prepared in their own way, and they hold up as ingredients rather than filler.
There are momo in there as well, so it is plenty satisfying without rice — add rice to this and you might end up rather too full! Yes, a good soup curry. Satisfied.
Thinking about it, soup curry with nothing but vegetables made for a remarkably healthy lunch. It would of course be good with rice too, but the Mandala Special has so much in it that the quantity may be a bit much. It opens early, so on a weekday it struck me as a very easy place to get into. If you find yourself around here wanting soup curry, I recommend it.
SHANTi Itabashi (Soup curry / Kami-Itabashi Station)
Tabelog lunch rating ★★★☆☆ 3.3
I ate here and paid for it myself. Nothing on this site is a comped meal.
One more for the road?
